Sunsets Made of Starlight
by Good Question
Summary: Dean had lost everything. By the grace of God he'd gotten his brother back. And by a second miracle Cas was back in his lap. But good things don't happen. Not to the Winchester's, not to Dean.


**Title; **Sunsets Made of Starlight

**Rating; **T for now

**Parining; **Destiel (Dean/Cas, sort of?); with a side order of Lisa/Dean.

**Warnings; **I can't think of any, but for those of you worried, there will be no massive underage.

**Spoilers; **Swan Song AU and then none. I'm really going off the charts on ignoring canon.

**Summary; **Dean had lost everything. By the grace of God he'd gotten his brother back. And by a second miracle Cas was back in his lap. But good things don't happen. Not to the Winchester's, not to Dean.

**Notes; **I just wanted to write a baby!Cas fic, and this is what came out of it. I think I saw a few pics of Dean with baby!Cas and I just had a lot of feelings about it. I'm also more or less ignoring soulless!Sam for this since I'm veering so far off canon and I had this feeling of – well what if Cas WASN'T resurrected. And Cas will age super-human fast. I've got a lot of things I wanna write in this head-verse but it's a lot to hash out. I hope I have the energy for more. On a whim drabble turned into a story. Also; I have no beta. So sorry for fuck ups.

"It has wings," Dean stated holding the squirming toddler at arms length after it had been unceremoniously dumped into his lap.

"Castiel, has wings," Gabriel said with an eye roll.

"You're lying," Dean spat back, the sneering face he held turning the little toddlers smile into a frown, edges of his lips quivering. Not that Dean would've noticed; he was too busy glaring at the newly resurrected archangel. Cas was dead, he'd seen him blow up with his own eyes. If God had been involved, as Gabriel claimed with how Sam had miraculously showed up at Lisa's doorstep. The memories of those few hours of rigorous testing to see if it really was his brother, and the emotional explosion he hadn't been able to suppress still fresh in his mind after six months, not that he was going to dwell on it, not now. He'd mourned, with several nights of binge drinking, once after he'd lost everything, and twice when Sam had returned and he had waited for weeks to see if their favorite angel had gotten the same treatment.

"It does look like him," Sam offered weakly, his own voice sounding strange even to him. They'd only had an hour to adjust to Gabriel being back. He'd disappeared after barely satisfying the Winchesters 'you're not a demon or a hallucination' requirements, and come back with a little bundle.

"Not good enough," Dean said his hands shaking. He glanced down, angry at his own arms for betraying emotion, until he noticed that he wasn't the only one shaking. 'Cas' was crying quietly in his outstretched hands, dangling in what had to be an uncomfortable position, eyes wide and staring at the ugly face and the anger roiling off of Dean.

Gabriel huffed and pulled the baby from the hunters hands and held him against him, letting the slow roll of his grace wash over his brother. "Stop scaring him," he said firmly as he attempted to calm his brother down.

Dean had the grace to look ashamed for a small second before his scowl returned. "Fuck you. You know what, I'm okay with 'God' maybe having to do something with this, Sam and you. But you are the biggest problem to me buying any of this crap."

Sam hummed in agreement, unable to take his eyes off the angel pair. Neither of them could forget the tricks that 'Loki' had played on them.

"You get the angel you've been praying to see for months back and you can't even play nice," Gabriel tutted at them.

"Shut it," Dean ground out between clenched teeth. "I know I'm not the brightest kid in the room but I'm not that fuckin' stupid. You can't see angel wings, they don't work on this plane, they'd, fuck up our systems or whatever. And you got ganked too and there's not a damn thing changed about you."

Gabriel raised an eyebrow, "When did you get so smart?"

Before Dean could make a bitter retort Sam intervened, "So God brought me back for whatever reason. But, before we get to the kid, if I got out... what about Michael? Lucifer? Adam?"

The surprise on Dean's face showed clearly that he hadn't put much thought into them, especially not after Sam had returned and they were back hunting, in between stay at homes with Lisa and Ben.

"Taken care of in the manner God found appropriate," Gabriel said dropping it at that, his stomach roiling at the memories that came back with it. Now was not the time for it, "I can assure you, this is Cas. We chose James Novak's biology for his growing vessel because it seemed to make sense. Management seemed to think that maybe you'd be more accepting and less dipshits if he showed up in a familiar physiology."

Dean's eyes wandered to the still shaking bundle in the archangels arms. None of this made sense, not one bit, and he didn't trust things that didn't make sense.

"Fine, whatever, what about the wings? We know that's true for sure," Sam said after a long silence where he'd expected his brother to intervene.

Gabriel grinned, "Personal touches. Cool aren't they?" the archangel brushed a hand through the small dark brown, almost black feathers. "Not your usual brand or color but hey, he did turn a pretty big 180 on heaven. You generally don't just walk away from that."

"Not an explanation," Dean replied.

"Fine fine, Jesus. I didn't have all the say in this; I think I had none actually, we all got pulled back kinda at the same time. It's pretty cosmically expensive to make new angels. Cas is special tho', it's not every day an angel gets personally into it at the end of the Apocalypse with Lucifer."

"You did."

If Gabriel was more human, he might have flinched. Instead his invisible wings twitched and withdrew into his body. "Cas here," he let himself give a small endearing glance at what he held in his arms, "was blown up, atoms and grace strewn about all of creation and dimensions. It's a little harder to bring all of it back."

The brothers recoiled at that a little, feeling something heavier shift through the room. Gabriel continued to stroke the angels wings, calming him down. "We did the best we could," he said his voice dropping a little. "They're functional, or they will be. Most of what we could retrieve is there, but it will take him time to gain what he can back." The two brothers exchanged quick glances. "We're a little busy up in Heaven, and I was led to believe by you two knuckleheads that he was just a little important to you guys, have a bit more of a heart."

Dean wasn't able to speak after that, so Sam took the wheel. "Okay, uhm, let's just say this is Castiel, what are we supposed to do? I don't understand."

"We're fixing the management, but Cas here needs a little more help, it was determined that this was the best course of action," the archangel replied icily, "there aren't exactly a bucket full of options here with him. So he has wings because we couldn't get all of the parts that make him an angel back, he's a little kid because it's the only way we can rebuild 'the little angel that could'."

"I don't know if you noticed but we don't exactly live the family lifestyle," Dean muttered at him, choosing to ignore the way his heart was pounding. Cas was back.

"No one's confused on that front, trust me, derailing the apocalypse generally ends up in being something you remember about people. He'll grow faster than normal, but after everything he did, I think you two should be feeling a little more blessed than you are." He walked over to Sam, shoving the half asleep baby into his arms, Sam had no choice but to take him or drop him on the floor.

"We'll keep in touch," Gabriel said with a smile and a small dark flicker behind his eyes before leaving in a rush of fluttering sounds.

"Fucking damn it," Dean said dropping his head into his palms and massaging his temples.

A few moments of silence passed before Sam spoke, "You know, if he's right, then... this is something we should be happy about."

"Happy! You call this fucking happy?!"

Sam awkwardly attempted to cradle the small angel closer to him when he felt him start to squirm, "Dean, volume."

He was met with angry eyes as Dean stood up, checking his pocket to make sure his wallet was in it, "I need a drink." And without missing a beat the older hunter stormed out of the motel room. The door slamming startled Cas awake and Sam was left to try and figure out if he had a paternal side to him at all.

Dean found his way to the closest bar that he could get to, on foot. He might've wanted to lose himself in everything he could but he'd be damned, again, if he fucked up the Impala. He seated himself at the bar and tapped the table to get the bartenders attention. Three shots of Jack. He knocked them back without blinking. It was something he may have given a small wince at but with what was roiling inside of him, he barely felt it. He ordered three more.

Sometimes Dean felt like all of the moments in his life just lead to massive break downs, but he didn't have a car to beat up, or anyone to kill at the moment. Their last hunt had gone smoothly and they were two days away from him going back home to Lisa and Ben. Their names wrung a small tremor through him especially after the conversation he'd had with Gabriel. 'Stupid son of a bitch,' he thought as he drained his fifth shot.

Memories he'd been fighting, trying to hide, were flying back at him like there was no tomorrow. The first sick roil through his stomach had been a jerk back to when they'd first decided on the dumb ass plan; the one that saved the world. Watching as they drained demons of their blood and killing their vessels, so that Sam could be juiced up to 'save the world'. It had reminded him too much of the time he'd spent with Alastair.

'Angels don't sleep.'

He took another shot and was tempted to ask someone for a cigarette. Something he hadn't done since he was in high school hanging out with some of the more rambunctious kids. He'd had a feeling Cas wasn't going to survive the end game with the soft snoring in the back of the car. He knew angels didn't sleep. The two of them had indulged in enough late nights to know that Cas never did. He just rested. And the conversation after with Sam, and a dormant part of his memory realizing that Cas had stopped snoring and was aware of the conversation.

Lisa.

He didn't down his next shot with full force, instead taking half of it, some of it burning on his lips.

One of the few blessings he'd run to in his life. That was another massive fuckfest eating him up. He had never talked to her much, past the basic details of that first night as he lay broken and beat, silently crying in her arms in that wonderfully soft bed of hers. Cas was a subject he'd never expanded on. Dean had always been dysfunctional, she knew that, and accepted it, but how the hell was he going to address this now. 'Hey, this angel guy, Cas, that I had kind of a thing with that died? Well he's back as a baby and I gotta take care of him.' The thought forced a bitter laugh out of his throat that sounded more like a frog croaking. He downed the rest of the shot and the next one. God was he in need of a therapist.

'You don't have to be mean.'

Fuck all if he didn't have a way of ending most things on a bad note.

Abrupt good byes; not even a...

He let the edges of his mouth curve into a self hating smirk, - and that _stupid bastard _had still showed up to save his dumb ass. Their dumb asses. Too angry to notice the small glistening of the eyes and the flinches in the angels face as he tried to deal with in those last moments.

These were things he'd thought about a lot in the past year and some change of personal hell. It had taken him forever to realize that maybe, just maybe, Cas had been just as hurt, but without the human capacity for a break down. Soldier to the last drop.

But Sam.

Lisa, during his break downs, while he'd blabbered about nothing and everything that he and his brother had done, had told him that it wasn't his fault. Of course it was. He was the one that dragged him from his happy little college life, Lisa had countered with the fire, and he had momentarily shut up. He'd kept the major details short, dying and selling his soul wasn't exactly something he wanted to share, but he'd given a kiddy version. And she had told him that he had given Sam some sort of life, those vacation visits he'd started insisting on after the Croatoan virus. For a little while it had given him peace, until his mind got the best of him and he needed a few drinks again. Something to burn his emotions out of him. And the further his mind churned, the further his guilt flared about Sam and Cas. And fuck- maybe 'God' had a lot more to do with things than he thought. Bobby should've been dead. Dean dipped his head and tried to shake the feeling off. He'd been so angry when Bobby had been alive.

Why not Sam?

He remember passing out from pain and then just being awake like nothing had every fucking happened. Bobby there in that damn field, next to the Impala. No one else around but a burnt field and two old souls.

And fuck- Bobby taking care of his destroyed body until he felt brave enough, with Bobby's insistence once he remembered his promise to Sam, to go face Lisa. Another flash hit him then, bringing him back to Cas.

'Well if we've already lost... there's nothing to lose, right?'

How could he have missed that small down turn in the angel's eyes.

At the time he'd thought it was disappointment, until months later he'd realized it was sorrow. For him. Way to go running to the gallows Dean Winchester. He screwed his eyes shut tight as he cradled the last shot he had ordered in his hand, already feeling the effects. He'd have to slow it down some if he didn't want to end up violently ill in an alley. But maybe that's exactly what he wanted. The next memory that washed over him was of his drive up, and how he and Sam had tried to talk about what it was like. Having an angel inside you.

But he'd been angel whammied. Sam said the only thing he remembered feeling was sorrow.

Dean ordered a regular drink, the bartender seemed a little reluctant to give it to him, with the small sway that was starting to overcome his hand.

Cas. He was back. He refuse to believe it, he couldn't. Two parts guilt at watching him scorch his own brother, and be destroyed by another (especially now that he knew what had happened to his angel) and one part that things were too good to be true. He'd seen the splatter, all over that grassy ground, spilling on Bobby and he hadn't even had the time to blink.

Dean shook his head, rolling his shoulders trying to rid himself of the memory. Borboun wasn't doing it. He slammed a hundred dollar bill on the counter, a bit too drunk by the onslaught of alcohol in his system to care if it was too high of a tip for how much he'd drank. But this wasn't helping. He needed to hurt something. Dean knew once he woke up sober he would regret it, but for the moment, the brick wall in the alleyway crushing his knuckles was just as good as any target. He stumbled back to the motel room with his hands dripping in blood.

Dean had expected a lot of things from when he stumbled into the door. What he didn't expected was to have his drunk ass pulled into the motel bathroom and 'gently' shoved against a wall.

"You can't even see straight."

"Fuck off, I made it home didn't I?"

Sam shook his head a little and pulled back with a deep sigh. "Dean..."

"No. I can't do this, not now."

For a moment Sam understood before basic instincts took over. "You're smashed. I don't care if it's actually Castiel, or some other creature, but you don't show up plastered with a fuckin' baby in _our care._"

It took every thing in Dean not to bite back, mainly because he knew that his brother was right.

But what was he, other than a royal fuck up in everyone's plans?

Sam left him in the bathroom to sober up. He sagged against the wall and let himself drop down in a moment of drunken legs and emotional exhaustion. Eventually he managed to get his legs underneath him and splashed his face with water. A small part of him softened at the sight of his irrationally large younger brother curled around a nest of blankets he had made for the toddler... Cas... whatever. For a brief moment before he passed out there was a part of him that had hope.

At least Cas was alive and not scattered into a million atoms.

Did angels even have a heaven?


End file.
